Days Numbered
by Complete Sylence
Summary: In 28 days there was exposure, infection, widespread epidemic, and the destruction. How will Riku and the other few survivors make it out of Destiny City when at night the infection runs free? [rating may be boosted for violence and language]
1. Chapter 1

_Based on "28 Days Later"_

** . . . Days Numbered . . . **

_**Day 1 **_We were all exposed to this horrid illness. The symptoms were enough to make you go insane. Red eyes...vomiting blood...extremely violent behavior and blood lust...

_**Day 3 **_The infection started to spread...

_**Day 8**_ It became one of the worst epidemics people had ever seen. History having no match for it...

_**Day 15 **_An evacuation was ordered, but...

By _**day 20 **_there was only devastation... sadly, I was a part of it...the screaming, shouting, and killing of people with the red eyes. I couldn't remember what happened the in the crowded streets because all of a sudden it got dark. I woke up in the hospital...

_**Day 28 **_I wake to see everything destroyed, my city empty, and everyone...gone...

All in twenty eight days was exposure, infection, epidemic, and, lastly, devastation. I have a feeling...a feeling that my days are numbered...

My head was pounding as I woke up. I sat up and opened my eyes fully to look at my current location. I was by myself and saw that I was in the Destiny Hospital. No nurses...no doctors...nothing was stirring in the halls as far as I could have heard. I stood from my hospital bed and just noticed that it was cold in the room due to the fact I had no shirt on. All I had on were dark blue, long pants and my socks on. I looked in the small mirror and saw that I had bandages around my forehead and suddenly remembered that I was hit at one point and blacked out. I grabbed a random brush by the mirror and brushed my hair before using a rubber band on the table to pull my long silver hair back. I grabbed one of the hospitals white, short sleeve shirts, and put my converse shoes back on.

Walking out of my room and into the hallway I saw cords, needles, broken glass, and may other things on the floor of the hall way. I made my way over to the elevator and was happy to find out that it still worked just fine. I pressed the down arrow and the door opened for me very quickly. I got on and went down to the first floor of the hospital. When the doors opened I saw that exact same thing as I did on the fourth floor. No people and everything was wrecked. I placed my hand over my stomach as it growled with hunger. I looked both ways and to my left I saw two vending machines that had been broken and were open. I walked over to them and opened them the whole way. The first one I came to had a lot of chips and candy in it. I grabbed a bag of sour cream and onion chips, and then walked over to the other machine. I looked in it and it had a lot of soda. I was quick to reach for a root beer. I then looked over at the front doors that lined down the front of the building. Walking over to them I saw that the streets of the city were completely empty. Not knowing what I was going to do when I walked around the city, I walked back over to the machines and placed my drink and chips on the ground. I looked to my right and saw a good sized sack that had a few items in it. When I opened the sack and poured out what was in it, I saw that the sack must have belonged to a patient of the hospital. A little girl by the looks of it. What I saw was a few shirts with rainbows and unicorns on them, which were pink. Next to I brushes, clothes, and pictures, he saw a dark brown teddy bear. The bear had a red ribbon tied around it's neck and a small bell was on the ribbon. I stood from where I was kneeling and looked at the bear in my hands. For some reason, I had this feeling that I had to take the bear with me. I placed it back in the sack and then put in some more chips, drinks, and a few candy bars before walking out of the hospital. With the sack slung over my left shoulder and my root beer in my right hand, I walked down the stairs to the hospital and looked around Hope Square, the heart of Destiny Cities. I heard no chatter of people or laughter of children. All I could really hear was the wind blowing papers around on the streets and sidewalks. I was no bent on learning what happened here since I had a foggy memory of it.

Empty stores, empty buildings, and everything else was completely contorted. Things in weird places, cars on their sides, windows broken, flag poles bent, and stores barricaded with gates. I was going to look atthis one store to see if anyone was in the safely of the gates when something hit my shin. I looked down to see it was a newspaper. I picked it up, hoping it was not to old of a paper. I looked at the date. It came out on the twentieth and since I had lost track of what day it was I assumed it was a good enough paper. My eyes grew wide when I saw the headline.

**EPIDEMIC!**

_Word of a deadly illness had rung throughout the city only 20 days before and no one had really thought of it until it hit the heart of Destiny Islands and it's cities. With a lose of more than half of the islands population, the government has ordered an evacuation of the entire island. The only problem they face is if there are enough ships to take all citizens out of the city. Ships have been the fastest way so far since the bridge from Destiny Islands to Isle Armada are congested. It was filed that Isle of Armada does not want to infection to reach them and they have blocked off the bridge on their end by lifting their half of the bridge. With out the other man at the controls at Armada, no one from Destiny City will be able to leave via car. Only by ship._

_The illness does not have a name, but all that have it have been given the name; "The Infected". All who are infected have been killed by the illness due to vomiting of large amounts of blood or they were killed by the people who were running on the streets trying to get away. A long with teenagers and adults, sadly, small children have been catching the illness and attacked many. They were quick a agile in attack, those who were not killed quickly. Many infected others by biting them, breaking the skin. It has also been known that if the blood of an Infected gets in your mouth, eyes, or wound you could be quickly infected. Eyes turn blood red, extreme violence is common in behavior, and continuous vomiting of blood. How much longer will this go on and will it be known as the worst epidemic in history, beating the death toll of The Black Death from the 1300's? Who knows if we will survive or if we will die horrid deaths..._

I threw the paper onto the ground and felt like screaming at the top of my lungs. Now that I knew what was going on I wanted to see if there was anyone else left in the city or if it was just me. Oh how much I wished I was not the only one left in the entire city, let alone the island.

I was quick in my search, shouting random names of people, hoping for an answer. I shouted into work buildings, gas stations, toy stores, cafes, restaurants, and any other placed I could think of looking for people. Then it hit me. The last time a disaster hit the city everyone sought comfort in the cities church. I snapped my fingers and smiled at my thought. I started to run down the street with my sack still over my shoulder, throwing my empty root beet bottle behind me. It was only a few moments before I reached the large church doors and opened them without stopping to stare. I walked into the church to conserve energy and looked around. The first room was completely empty. I walked up to the doors to the large service room. When I opened it I walked onto the balcony that overlooked the services. I placed my hand over my mouth after seeing all of the carnage. Bodies were everywhere, blood on the floors, seats, and walls. I took a step back and removed my hand that was now shaking in fear. I took a deep breath as well as swallowed the lump in my throat. I felt like gagging after taking a smell of the rotting corpses.

I took that one step forward and said, in a low voice, almost a whisper, "Hello?" That one word was loud enough to have about four people rise from where they were. At first a smile came to my lips, but only to suddenly turn into a sigh of fear when I saw them running over to corpses to get to the stairwell to my right. I ran out of the service area and then back out of the church to find myself on the streets again and the sun going down. I turned to see the first two doors before the main doors fly open and four men running over to me. I started to run again. That slight second I saw them was enough to see that they were part of the Infected. They were covered in cuts, bruises, and blood was all over them. I turned a corner and heard them slide on the street to quickly start running after me again.

I turned a corner quickly and jumped into a small hole that was made in the side of a building by a car that had crashed into it. The Infected ran right passed me. I took a deep breath and smiled a little, but shouted bloody murder as I was attacked from behind. I flipped whatever that was on my back off of me and onto the floor. It was a little girl in jean shorts and a pink tank top with a fairy on it. I remembered the clothes back at the hospital. She lunged at me again and then I saw her fall back onto the ground from mid-air. Blood went everywhere and splattered onto my pants. I turned to see who killed the small girl. It was man and two other women from the look of it. I looked back down at the small girl and she had a bullet hole in her forehead.

"Are you okay?" asked the male, walking over to me side and placing a hand on my shoulder. He was wearing a dark green paintball helmet, but the gun he had was anything but a paintball gun. He wore a black, long sleeve shirt and thick gray gloves. He was wearing long, baggy, straight leg pants with chains cris-crossing in the back. His shoes were boots that seemed to have a good mount of dried blood on it as well as the rest of his clothes.

The two girls behind him were shorter than him and shorter than me. They also wore paintball helmets, but the girl to his left wore a dark blue one as the other one wore a pinkish-red one. The one in dark blue wore a black, long sleeve shirt that had different colored stars scattered all over it. Her jeans were low-rise, dark blue jeans with blood stains on it. Her shoes were black and blue sneakers. Around her neck was a chain choker necklace. She wore purple gloves on her hands.

The one in the pinkish-red helmet wore a black, short sleeve shirt that said "Coheed & Cambria" on it in red. The style of the letters made it look it lit was written in blood, but outlined in white. She wore a jeans jacket over her shirt which was unzipped. She also wore a necklace that was a little loser than her friends and it had a heart pendent on it. Her jeans fit well from the knee up, but was very bagging from the knee down. Her jeans also had blood stains on it as well. She wore the same converse shoes as me and unlike the other two she wasn't wearing any gloves.

"Good to hear," said the male, "at least you are alight. We better get moving." I could tell by his voice that he was probably a few years old than me. The two girls nodded in response and followed the other man until he looked back at me. "Coming?"

I nodded, but reached into my bag first. I pulled out the dark brown teddy bear and placed it in the small girls arms. That was the instant I ran with the older male and the two girls as I heard some screeches and cries of the Infected get louder. It was not long before we got to a "safe place" as the older man called. It was one of the store that had gates closing it and keeping everything from the outside world away. He closed the gate and locked the doors. He took his helmet off to show his face which looked like the face of someone in their twenties. His hair was blonde and quit spiky.

"Name's Cloud," he said, placing his helmet on the floor. "Yours?" I sat on the ground and then looked up at the man who had addressed me.

"I'm Riku," I said. "Who are your two little helpers?" The two girls looked at Cloud and then at one another. Their glares ended up on me after a moment or so. "Well? Are you going to take your helmets off for me or are you going to just stare at me?" The girl in the dark blue helmet placed her gun down and took het helmet off. Her hair fell to her shoulders and it was a extremely dark brown or it was black. Her eyes were also really very dark. I couldn't tell since the only light in the store was the light of the moon. She smiled at me.

"I'm Alexa," she said. She elbowed her friend who was leaning against the wall and whose gun was already on the floor. She also took her helmet off and placed it on the floor. She looked over at me and took a deep breath. Her chocolate brown hair reached below her shoulders and was in long, loose curls. Her eyes were a light green with blue tints from what I could see. What also shined a little was her lip gloss. She gave me a small wave.

"Name's Aaron," she said. I nodded and then looked back at Cloud.

"Sp, what's up with the clothes you have there, Riku?" he asked me. I looked at him and then looked down at the ground.

"Well, when I woke up...I was in the hospital. All I can remember is that I blacked out at one point during the panic attack of the city. So much screaming and crying is also some things I remember. When I woke up this morning I didn't see any doctors, nurses, or other people. I just got a shirt, my shoes, and grabbed some stuff to eat before I left the building. I read one of the papers I found and read about what had happened, but it didn't tell me where everyone had gone. So, I went to the one place most people go – the church, but when I got there it smelled like rotting flesh and zombie-like people came after me! I ran, got away, the girl attacked me, and you know the rest from there."

"I see," Cloud said. He sat down across from me and Alexa took a seat next to her still leaning friend. We all looked at each other for a moment and then Alexa said,

"Riku, in that bag do you have any food left or maybe something to drink?" I nodded and tossed her a bag of chips and a bottle of Sprite. I tossed Cloud a root beer and a candy bar as well as tossing Aaron a bottle of Mountain Dew and a bag of chips. "Thanks, Riku."

"No problem," I said. "So what are we going to do? If we are the only people left in the city, let alone the island, what can we do?"

"What we have to do is get to the Armada-Destiny Bridge and find a way to get across without getting killed," Aaron said. "We can only travel by day so we have to get up early tomorrow and get moving." I nodded.

"Understood," Cloud said. "We'll head out tomorrow morning when the sun first peaks over the horizon. We have to get to the other side of the city and to the bridge. Remember, when the sun starts to go down we need to find a place to stay immediately."

We all nodded and tried to get as much sleep as we could even though we could hear the continuous screeches of the Infected running around the city.


	2. Chapter 2

_As more and more people got infected, more and more people died. Now Riku and the other survivors are on their way to the Armada-Destiny Bridge, but how long will it take them to reach that destination, who will they meet, and who will die?_

** . . . Days Numbered . . . **

_**cHaPtEr 2**_

The morning came quicker that I had thought. Alexa and Aaron woke me up and Cloud was already to leave the store that we spent the night in. We were in haste as we made our way through the square of the large city. I looked over at the three people who had saved my life and were now walking ahead of me. Aaron and Alexa were ahead of Cloud and me. We were about to cross the street to get onto Huntington Street when I looked over to see something that had almost slipped my mind – my home. I started to run over to it.

"What the hell are you doing?" Aaron shouted, watching me run over to my home. I kept running without any comment. They soon chased after me as I busted into the house, breaking down the door. Without even thinking, I shouted;

"Mom? Dad? Is anyone here!?" I ran up the flight of stairs and ran into the first room which was my parents room. They were home...dead... I hit the floor on my knees and reached for my mothers hand. Her long blonde hair covered her face and my father had his arm over her as he lay on his stomach. My mother was in a lavender tank top and long white pants as my father was without a shirt and in his jeans. I looked over at the night stand and saw a bottle of sleeping pills. I grabbed the bottle and shook it to only see that it was empty. I dropped the bottle and stood from my spot on the floor and looked down at my parents. I moved my mother's hair out of her face and saw she had dried tears on her cheeks and a slight smile on her face as did my father. In my father's hand was a piece of paper. I reached for the paper and looked at it. It was a the picture that used to hang in the livingroom, but they must have taken it down. I took the picture from my father's hand and looked at it before turning it to see what was on the back. They had written me a note, but I bet they thought I would never read it. I did, and it said;

_Riku,_

_Now we can join you...wherever you are. You don't have to worry anymore about us because we can be one, big, happy family in the heavens._

_Please, don't wake up._

_Love, Mom and Dad_

I looked at my parents again and felt like hell. I had broken a promise that they wanted me to keep – I woke up. I placed the picture in my pocket and reached for the blanket that was on the floor next to me. After grabbing it I placed it on the bed over my parents so they would be comfortable for the rest of time. I felt a presence behind me and turned to see Aaron. "What?" She walked into the room and grabbed the bottle of sleeping pills that I dropped on the floor. She looked at the bottle and then at my mother and father.

"I see that they made a choice, and a good one in fact," she said. She placed the bottle on the night stand and started to walk away when I asked;

"How is death a good choice?" She stopped and looked at me.

"It was either they got infected and killed you or they kill themselves and not spill the blood of others. That includes yours. They were very smart in their choice and brave enough to face the price of death. I congratulate them."

"Why didn't you make the 'smart choice'?" I asked. "It is such a good choice, why didn't you make that choice?"

"Because...I'm scared of death..." she said. "Apparently, they were not. That should not go unrewarded. What you will do to show that their death was not in vein is you are going to get your ass off of this island and out of the city to safety." Aaron walked away from me and I followed her shortly after. I knew she was right. I knew that I had to get out of Destiny City and over to Armada to show my parents that I could survive in such a hostile world. I wanted to avenge them even thought they took their own lives, not by another's hand. I looked out the window while walking down the stairs to see the sun setting. I started to run down the stairs.

"Cloud!" I shouted. He looked at me as he reached for the front door's knob.

"What is it?"

"It's getting to dark out and if we try to get around the city we will be chased after," I said in one breath. He opened the door and looked around the sidewalks and the city. The stiffness of the atmosphere started to stir and come back to life. I think we all could hear the Infected rising from the places that they slept in and started to walk about like that plague they were. A faint smell of rotting flesh seemed to pass by my nose shortly after the opening of the front door. For some reason, the smell was stronger at night. Cloud closed the door and looked on the floor. He saw a shard of metal that had fallen from the metal frame around the window. He used the thin piece of metal to lock the door. After we heard a click, he dropped the shard and turned to face me and the two girls.

"Alright...we have no choice, but to stay here for the night. Be sure to stay away from any windows or openings. If the Infected see you, you will be their next victim. Now, everyone, get into the basement." We nodded and followed Clouds orders.

I could not sleep knowing that my parents were on the third floor dead and I was on the lowest level still breathing, probably, my last breaths. I looked to my right to see Aaron asleep on the couch and Alexa by the foot of the couch on the floor. Cloud was sleeping to my left against the wall, a gun loose in his hands. Quietly, I moved from under my covers and walked up the stairs and onto the cold, bare wooden floor of the livingroom. The flashlight in my hands shed light on the dark room. I placed the flashlight on a picture in a brass frame, sitting on the counter by the kitchen. I walked up to the picture and held it in my fress hand. It was a picture of my mother and my father together. I placed the flashlight on the counter, pointing me as I picked up the picture. I took the picture out of the frame and put it back down on the counter. I placed the picture in my pocket and grabbed the flashlight again. Just when I was about to get a nice, cool glass of water to calm my nerves I heard heavy breathing and the sound of hard steps. Suddenly, the window over the livingroom TV broke and a man with black hair, red eyes, and blood on him stood and stared at me. Saliva dripped from his lips and his spine cracked as he stood straight. He turned his head and looked at me with a hard stare that screamed murder. He lunged at me, tackling me to the floor. I tried to push him off and kept my eyes and mouth closed so I would not get infected. I heard more footsteps and them a scream. It was the scream of the man on me. I opened my eyes to see Alexa and Aaron, hacking away at the man with long bladed knives. Cloud was about to shoot the man, but as soon as he heard the click of the loaded gun he leapt at Cloud and took a bite into his arm. Cloud shouted in pain as Alexa and Aaron worked together to hack the man even more. After a while, Alexa was able to grab the mans hair, pull his head back, and Aaron clit his throat quickly. The man fell over into a pool of blood. Alexa looked at me.

"Did any blood or saliva get into your eyes or mouth?" she asked me. I shook my head no, but then she turned her attention to Cloud. I could see Aaron grip her knife tightly as she looked at the cut on Cloud's arm.

He looked up from his wound at Alexa and Aaron. "Just wait...maybe...maybe it's not..." he said. Aaron shook her head.

"You are...and I have too," she said. Cloud shook his head no. Alexa turned her head to face me, but I sat there and watched Aaron hack away at Cloud with the knife. She was quick to take off his arm first and then started to hack away at the rest of the man. I looked at Alexa and she had a tear running down her right cheek. I looked back over at Aaron who was now standing over Cloud's dead body. She dropped her knife and looked at me and Alexa. She had blood dripping down the left side of her face and blood covered her forearms and hands. Dots of blood were on her pants and shirt. "We are leaving...now. Get the weapons, helmets, food, and lets get out of here. It's starting to get lighter out. We need to keep moving." Alexa and I nodded. We were quick to reply to Aaron by giving her results. We got everything and got out of the house.

As the sun hit noon in the sky, it started to get warm. Aaron took off her jacket and dropped it onto the sidewalk. She knew that we needed to carry lightly and just came to the decision to leave her jacket there. I looked at Alexa and Aaron from behind and asked;

"Why did you have kill Cloud? He probably wasn't infected," I said.

"We only had ten to twelve seconds to kill him before he tried to infect us," Alexa said, "and we knew he was infected. Even if the blood of the man did get into his own blood stream, we knew for certain that the man's saliva did. Cloud would have become one of them. Aaron did him a favor."

"Now he can join his girlfriend," Aaron said. She looked at me and could tell that I wanted to know the story. She directed her attention away from me. "Cloud and his girlfriend, Areith, lived with one another in his home down that street over there. Areith was out getting food when Cloud heard of the outbreak and the riots that were going on around the market area. He got there as quickly as he could, but he was too late. Areith had been bitten and was attacking anyone who got within four feet of her. She lunged at him, but he was able to get her away. He wanted to take her out of her misery and beat her to death with a metal baseball bat from the small toy store near by. Now he can be with her."

"What about your stories? What about you two?" I asked.

"Well," Alexa began, "when my family heard of the outbreak my mother would not let anyone leave the house. Finally, we started to run low on food so my father left the house to get some more, but he never came back. My mom thought he died and wanted to the whole family to be together in the heavens. Before killing herself...she tried to kill me. I ran, cried, and shouted at her to stop it, but she continued to chase after me with the kitchen knife. I finally got tired of it, ran into the garage, grabbed an axe, and waited for her to come through the door. She did and I...well...I lopped her head off with the axe. Her body fell to the floor as I dropped the axe. After that I ran out of the house and into the daylight."

I turned my attention to Aaron. "And your story while we are sharing?" She took a deep breath and crossed her arms as we continued to walk over broken glass, lights, signs, and corpses.

"Well, my mother, father, and sister all heard of the illness and boarded up our home so no one could get in. My father started to go crazy after a few days and died in his sleep after taking a whole bottle of knock out tablets. My mother wanted to be with my father, but could not get her hands on any of the medicine after I locked the cabinets. My mom begged me to give her the keys to unlocking the cabinet, but I told her that she needed to stay here and help my sister and me. She refused and then threatened to kill Misha if I didn't let her have the tablets or kill her myself. I thought she was bluffing and said no. That was going to be the biggest mistake of my life. And it was. I was watching the news when I heard a gunshot in Misha's room. I ran upstairs to see the gun in my mother's hand and my sister on the floor. She was dead and my mother was her killer. Without wasting time I grabbed my sisters golf club and beat my own mother to dead in my sisters room. I knew that my mother would have tried to kill me to get to the tablets, lay in bed with my fathers body, and fall into the endless rest. I didn't want that crazy psycho bitch in the same death bed as my father. I did what I had to do and I did it. After that I grabbed my shoes, put them on, grabbed my coat, and ran out of the house. I found myself waking up in the same store we took you two on the twenty-third. Apparently I passed out due to hunger and thirst. Cloud got me back on my feet and that's when we found Alexa."

I felt my heart sink into my stomach because I felt like an idiot. At first I complained about just waking up in the hospital after being hit over the head in the streets while Alexa and Aaron had to kill their mothers. Alexa's father never returned, Aaron's mother killed her little sister, and her father did the same as my parents. Now I knew why they seemed to have little to no sympathy for me because they went through much, much worse.

"Hey, look!" Alexa said, pointing to a building. Aaron and I looked up at the building and saw what seemed to be X-mas lights on the porch of an apartment. "Maybe some more survivors are up there!"

"There's only one way to find out," I said with a smirk, finally feeling somewhat happy. There were other survivors! I couldn't believe it. We all ran towards the building and when we finally came up to the garage area of the apartments we could see glow-in-the-dark arrows pointing up the stairs. Alexa started to laugh out of happiness. "I cannot remember the last time I felt joyed."

"Same here," Alexa laughed. Aaron, Alexa, and I climbed over the barrier of busted cars to get to the stairway. We started to run up the stairs, but after a little while we had to stop running and walk since we were running out of energy for running. Apparently, the people who set up the lights were smart to set up the lights, but not so bright on having them be on the top floor – the fourteenth floor. We were only on the sixth floor when we started to walk and were now on the eighth.

"Can we stop for a moment?" asked Alexa. "I'm running out of energy to even walk. Please, Aaron." Aaron turned to look at Alexa and even she was breathing heavily like Alexa and I. She nodded and we all took a seat. Aaron sat on the second stair, I was sitting on the first to her right, and Alexa sat on the small flat area before the last flight of steps we walked. "Riku, can I have a soda or something?"

I nodded and reached into my bag. I handed her a Sierra Mist, but she handed it back. "Do you have Vault or something?" she asked me. "Something with a hell of a lot more caffeine and sugar."

"Somewhere in here I do," I stated. I started to look through the bag when Aaron quickly stood from her spot and looked over the railing. Then we all heard what she heard before us. Screeching and crashing.

"They're making over the barriers and up the stairs!" Aaron said. "Get moving!" She grabbed her bag quickly and we both followed her up the stairs. Before we knew it was saw the sign that said _14 Floor _on it as we ran passed it. I was now head of Aaron and almost got onto the floor of the 14th floor, but crashed into a man. He was holding a large, clear police shield and a helmet that was similar to Aaron's and Alexa's but it was black.

"Please, let us through! We are not infected, but they are coming!" I shouted. "Please, sir!" I was desperate to get through the man and run into one of the rooms to get away from the coming Infected. Alexa looked over the rail.

"They're on the tenth floor! Please, sir, let us through, please!" Alexa cried. He looked at me and the girls. He nodded and stepped aside as he shouted;

"Go to room 132 and tell my daughter I let you in!" We nodded and ran over to the first door across from the man. He went back to blocking the way when the Infected ran into the man and tried to rip the shield apart. He used all of his strength to push the two male Infected down the stairs. I started to pound on the door as the small blonde haired girl looked at me from the other side of the door.

"Your father let us in! Please, allow us to come in!" I shouted. The girl nodded and opened the door as quickly as she could. Aaron and Alexa ran in first as I ran in after them, closing the door behind me. The girl locked the door and watched her father outside of the door. Her father looked at the Infected as they hit the hard, cold metal of the stairs. He quickly threw his shield on top of the first Infected and jumped on the shield. He heard the Infected's spine snap and blood spirt out of his eyes and mouth. Then he jumped off of the shield and leapt onto the skull of the other male, crushing his head under his weight. He grabbed his shield and ran up the stairs and before he hit the door, his daughter opened it, let him in, and closed the door behind him. She locked it and the two turned to face us.

"Well, this is very pleasing," he said, "I like the fact that Marry and I are not the only people left in the city." The man took the helmet off and placed the shield down. He looked over at us. He had long brunette hair and a scar on his face. He wore leather pants and a white short sleeve shirt. "My name is Leon. This is my seven-year-old daughter Marry." His daughter came up next to her father and he placed his arm over her shoulders. The small girl had long red hair and brown eyes. She wore jeans and a grey long sleeve shirt.

"Hi," she said shyly. Alexa and I smiled, but Aaron gave her a small wave. She looked up at her father and he gave her a small push into the kitchen.

"Get our guests something to eat and to drink," he said to his daughter. I held up my bag and looked at the man.

"We have our own food so, please, keep what you have for you and your daughter," I said. He looked over at me and looked into the bag. He laughed a little.

"All that sugar and salt may give you energy, but you will not feel so well after eating to much of it," he said. His daughter came back in with a bowl of fruit and three glasses of water. Aaron grabbed the apple, Alexa reached for the orange, and I took the banana. Leon and Marry sat in the chair opposite the couch that me and the others now inhabited.

"Well, our showers still work and we have fresh, clean clothes that you all can use," Leon said. "I know that this place doesn't look like much, but we hope that it will help you recover somewhat."

"It's a lot better than the last two places we've been staying at," Alexa said. "Thank you...very much." Marry walked over to Alexa and Aaron. She grabbed both of their hands and tugged on them lightly for the two girls to stand up. They did and Marry smiled.

"You can stay with me in my room," said the little girl. "It can be like a sleepover!" Alexa smiled as she and her friend followed the small girl into her room. Leon smiled and sat back in his chair. I looked over at him.

"She's really cute," I said.

"Isn't she? She takes after her mother..."

"Where is her mother?"

Leon was silent for a moment. "Infected." I was now saddened to hear that such a young girl lost her mother to the illness. I felt like an idiot asking that question. "I could see in her eyes, as she looked at your two friends, that she was happy. Happy to finally see two other women. It was really hard telling her where...or...what her mother was. I never told her the truth."

"What is the truth?" I asked.

His silence came back to him, but only for another moment. "Dead. I killed her. She was going to attack Marry in her sleep and I could not let my little girl die like that. I killed her mother and threw the body over the deck. From this very floor. I told her that mom was infected...if she was alive or not I didn't say. I wanted to her to believe her mother was just not herself, but she was still alive. I don't want to scare her by telling her that I killed her mother after she got infected. That's why I lied."

"You lied for good reason."

"I suppose so," he said. "How rude of me. I have forgotten to ask you for your name. What is your name as well as your two friends?" I sat up straight.

"My name is Riku. The girl with the really dark, straight hair is Alexa and the girl with the loose curls is Aaron. We are the only people from our part of town, that we know of, who are still alive."

"I see. Well, I shall bring your friends new clothes and you can feel free to go through my closet after taking a warm shower in the restroom."

"Thanks, Leon, but...tomorrow..."

"Tomorrow we are going to check the radios. If anything comes on we are going to leave this place and head for wherever it says. Agreed?"

I sat there thinking and finally nodded. "Agreed..."


End file.
